“You were right,” he said, “they only had like one guy on the back wall. I mean, there were five originally, but after the Rovers started blowing their whistles, they left just the one. He didn’t even know I was there until I was up the tree, over the wall, and standing behind him. Me and Brenda and Tonk.”
She kissed his cheek. “You’re like a little ninja. You’re so adorable I could eat you up.”
He flushed to the color of a ripe tomato and squirmed away from a hug. “It wasn’t anything special. Anyone could have—”
“Hush,” she told him. Then she glanced at Van Sloane. “Neeko’s sixteen. Brenda and Tonk are fifteen. They scaled a tree, jumped over the wall and captured the only fucking guard you left to defend the rear wall of this town. Seriously? Did you think that bad guys only break in one door at a time? No, don’t answer. Clearly you’re just not that smart.”
“Watch your mouth,” snapped Van Sloane, but although she bridled with indignation it was clear to everyone that her outrage had no power behind it. And nowhere to go.
“We could have taken over the whole damn town and killed you all in your sleep if we wanted to,” continued Dahlia. “Hell, a couple of halfwit hamsters could have—”
Church touched her arm. “Stop showing off,” he said mildly. “It’s unseemly and inefficient. Clock is ticking.”
The whistles were getting louder, emphasizing his point. People were coming from all over the town—many of them—and as they approached, the members of the Pack moved among them in pairs, one pointing a weapon, and the other taking any weapons held by the townies. It was a process that should not have been easy, and Dahlia had expected violent resistance, but the clockwork efficiency of the Pack, the confusion, and the obvious lack of training on the part of the townsfolk made the process a rinse-and-repeat. There were only a few instances of townies resisting, but the Pack members won every tussle. There were a few bruises and one smashed nose among Van Sloane’s people, but that was all. It was very nearly a bloodless takeover.
That was not a comfort to Dahlia, though. The Rovers were coming and she had no idea how many of them there were. Or how well-armed they were.
Dahlia nodded and addressed Van Sloane in a calmer voice. “Listen, Mayor Van Sloane, those whistles are the Rovers. That’s not a joke. I think the reason they’re making so much noise, and the reason they aren’t already climbing over the walls, is that they’re playing a game. They’re drawing your attention here. It worked, too, because you pulled most of your guards away from the rest of the walls. It’s a magic trick. They make a big show of letting you see how empty their hands are, but they already have a bunch of stuff hidden in little pockets. Bunnies and scarves and stuff. Point is, you fell for it. They’re going to hit you hard right here at the main gate and as soon as they’re sure they have your complete attention, they’ll hit you from behind.”
“You can’t know that,” said Van Sloane, but there was no confidence in her tone.
“Sure we can,” said Dahlia. “Nothing else makes sense. The Rovers want this place. They don’t want to destroy it to take it, so distraction and infiltration makes perfect sense.”
“I . . . ” began Van Sloane, and then she faltered.
More whistles now. Louder and louder.
“Here’s the way this is going to work,” said Dahlia, raising her voice so everyone could hear. “Anyone in this crowd who came here looking for shelter and has had to work for it, step forward. Anyone who is a ‘helper.’ Anyone forced to work. Anyone who’s had their stuff taken away. All of you step forward.”
Out of a crowd of nearly three hundred people, more than a hundred people moved through the crowd toward Dahlia. They looked at her, and then at each other, and it was clear to her that they were surprised at how many there were. Van Sloane had probably kept them in small groups so they wouldn’t have exactly this kind of realization.
The people were a mix of races—several kinds of Asian, and every shade of brown skin, from one couple who looked more African than African-American to Latinos and Middle Eastern faces. There were some white people, too, but they might as well have had “fringe crowd” tattooed on them. They were skaters, squatters, street kids, and others. No one who would easily fit into the world of manicured lawns, upscale socials, or summers in the Hamptons. They were dressed in a kind of uniform—as much as available clothing supplies allowed, she reckoned—jeans and T-shirts. All soiled by hard work, except for the ones who probably worked indoors or with kids.
As Dahlia climbed up onto a low brick decorative wall, she felt a whole speech rising to her lips, but she had to bite it down. Anything she said would be obvious to everyone, and they would all know that this wasn’t an aberration. This was an extension of how it so often was—of an affected few using force, or laws, or trickery, or money to subjugate anyone who did not have the same skin color, the same politics, or belong to the same exclusive bloodlines. It made her want to stab Van Sloane in the face. A lot. It made her want to take all of the assholes who ran Happy Valley and toss them over the walls so the Rovers could do whatever they wanted to them. It made her hate being who she was—a child of privilege herself, a white girl. Fuck, it made her loathe being a carbon-based lifeform in this twisted world.
What she said aloud was different, and it took a great deal of willpower to say what she needed to say rather than what she wante
d to say.
“This is all going to happen fast, so here’s the deal,” she shouted. “The helpers are free. No debts, no obligations, no bullshit. Anyone from Happy Valley who doesn’t like it—too bad. But here’s the thing. A gang called the Rovers are about to attack the town. Those whistles you hear are them coming. There are a lot of them. They won’t give a crap if you’re a resident here or a slave. They’re coming to take this place away from all of us, and they aren’t going to be nice about it. We don’t have time for a debate and this isn’t a democracy. I’m in charge.”
“Says who?” growled one of the men from town. One of the helpers, a tall black man wearing work gloves and with grass stains on the knees of his pants, got up in his face.
“How about you shut the fuck up while you can still make that choice on your own? Right about now she’s the first person to say something I want to hear in a long damn time.”
“You watch your mouth, nig—”
And that was as far as he got before the helper hooked a hard right fist into his gut and then brought his knee up as the man folded.
Then everyone was fighting.
— 39 —
THE WARRIOR WOMAN, THE SOLDIER, AND THE DOG
There were about a dozen of them, give or take. Everyone looked pretty well battered from the brawl they’d been engaged in. That didn’t seem to matter, though, because by now they were all pumping adrenaline by the gallon.
Baskerville went crashing through them to Rachael, and his bulk—with all of the leather and spikes—slammed into the zombie holding her ankle. Baskerville is trained not to bite the dead, but he has no issues at all generally and enthusiastically fucking them up. I saw parts fly and then Rachael shimmied backward with the hand still clutched around her ankle, but no arms attached to it. She kicked it off and got immediately to her feet without wasting time on shock and surprise. Smart.